[Marxism] Fwd: from Michael Moore

["David Quarter" <davidquarter@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Subject:                Fwd: Fw: [farm] Fwd: from Michael Moore

>> Begin forwarded message:
>>
>> > From: Kim Sawchuk <kim.sawchuk@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
>> >
>> > Hi everyone,
>> >
>> > Thought you might enjoy this,
>> >
>> > Kim
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > Begin forwarded message:
>> >>
>> >> Sunday, July 4th, 2004
>> >> My First Wild Week with "Fahrenheit 9/11"... By Michael Moore
>> >>
>> >> Friends,
>> >> Where do I begin? This past week has knocked me for a loop.
>> >> "Fahrenheit 9/11," the #1 movie in the country, the largest grossing
>> >> documentary ever. My head is spinning. Didn't we just lose our
>> >> distributor 8 weeks ago? Did Karl Rove really fail to stop this? Is
>> >> Bush packing?
>> >>
>> >> Each day this week I was given a new piece of information from the
>> >> press that covers Hollywood, and I barely had time to recover from
>> >> the last tidbit before the next one smacked me upside the head:
>> >>
>> >> ** More people saw "Fahrenheit 9/11" in one weekend than all the
>> >> people who saw "Bowling for Columbine" in 9 months.
>> >>
>> >> ** "Fahrenheit 9/11" broke "Rocky III?s" record for the biggest box
>> >> office opening weekend ever for any film that opened in less than a
>> >> thousand theaters.
>> >>
>> >> ** "Fahrenheit 9/11" beat the opening weekend of "Return of the
>Jedi."
>> >>
>> >> ** "Fahrenheit 9/11" instantly went to #2 on the all-time list for
>> >> largest per-theater average ever for a film that opened in
>> >> wide-release.
>> >>
>> >> How can I ever thank all of you who went to see it? These records are
>> >> mind-blowing. They have sent shock waves through Hollywood ? and,
>> >> more importantly, through the White House.
>> >>
>> >> But it didn't just stop there. The response to the movie then went
>> >> into the Twilight Zone. Surfing through the dial I landed on the Fox
>> >> broadcasting network which was airing the NASCAR race live last
>> >> Sunday to an audience of millions of Americans -- and suddenly the
>> >> announcers were talking about how NASCAR champ Dale Earnhardt, Jr.
>> >> took his crew to see ?Fahrenheit 9/11? the night before. FOX
>> >> sportscaster Chris Myers delivered Earnhardt?s review straight out of
>> >> his mouth and into the heartland of America: ?He said hey, it'll be a
>> >> good bonding experience no matter what your political belief. It's a
>> >> good thing as an American to go see.? Whoa! NASCAR fans ? you can?t
>> >> go deeper into George Bush territory than that! White House moving
>> >> vans ? START YOUR ENGINES!
>> >>
>> >> Then there was Roger Friedman from the Fox News Channel giving our
>> >> film an absolutely glowing review, calling it ?a really brilliant
>> >> piece of work, and a film that members of all political parties
>> >> should see without fail.? Richard Goldstein of the Village Voice
>> >> surmised that Bush is already considered a goner so Rupert Murdoch
>> >> might be starting to curry favor with the new administration. I don't
>> >> know about that, but I?ve never heard a decent word toward me from
>> >> Fox. So, after I was revived, I wondered if a love note to me from
>> >> Sean Hannity was next.
>> >>
>> >> How about Letterman?s Top Ten List: ?Top Ten George W. Bush
>> >> Complaints About 'Fahrenheit 9/11'":
>> >>
>> >> 10. That actor who played the President was totally unconvincing
>> >>
>> >> 9. It oversimplified the way I stole the election
>> >>
>> >> 8. Too many of them fancy college-boy words
>> >>
>> >> 7. If Michael Moore had waited a few months, he could have included
>> >> the part where I get him deported
>> >>
>> >> 6. Didn't have one of them hilarious monkeys who smoke cigarettes and
>> >> gives people the finger
>> >>
>> >> 5. Of all Michael Moore's accusations, only 97% are true
>> >>
>> >> 4. Not sure - - I passed out after a piece of popcorn lodged in my
>> >> windpipe
>> >>
>> >> 3. Where the hell was Spider-man?
>> >>
>> >> 2. Couldn't hear most of the movie over Cheney's foul mouth
>> >>
>> >> 1. I thought this was supposed to be about dodgeball
>> >>
>> >> But it was the reactions and reports we received from theaters around
>> >> the country that really sent me over the edge. One theatre manager
>> >> after another phoned in to say that the movie was getting standing
>> >> ovations as the credits rolled ? in places like Greensboro, NC and
>> >> Oklahoma City -- and that they were having a hard time clearing the
>> >> theater afterwards because people were either too stunned or they
>> >> wanted to sit and talk to their neighbors about what they had just
>> >> seen. In Trumbull, CT, one woman got up on her seat after the movie
>> >> and shouted "Let's go have a meeting!" A man in San Francisco took
>> >> his shoe off and threw it at the screen when Bush appeared at the
>> >> end. Ladies? church groups in Tulsa were going to see it, and weeping
>> >> afterwards.
>> >>
>> >> It was this last group that gave lie to all the yakking pundits who,
>> >> before the movie opened, declared that only the hard-core "choir"
>> >> would go to see "Fahrenheit 9/11." They couldn't have been more
>> >> wrong. Theaters in the Deep South and the Midwest set house records
>> >> for any film they?d ever shown. Yes, it even sold out in Peoria. And
>> >> Lubbock, Texas. And Anchorage, Alaska!
>> >>
>> >> Newspaper after newspaper wrote stories in tones of breathless
>> >> disbelief about people who called themselves ?Independents? and
>> >> ?Republicans? walking out of the movie theater shaken and in tears,
>> >> proclaiming that they could not, in good conscience, vote for George
>> >> W. Bush. The New York Times wrote of a conservative Republican woman
>> >> in her 20s in Pensacola, Florida who cried through the film, and told
>> >> the reporter: ?It really makes me question what I feel about the
>> >> president... it makes me question his motives
>> >> ?
>> >>
>> >> Newsday reported on a self-described ?ardent Bush/Cheney supporter?
>> >> who went to see the film on Long Island, and his quiet reaction
>> >> afterwards. He said, "It's really given me pause to think about
>> >> what's really going on. There was just too much - too much to
>> >> discount." The man then bought three more tickets for another showing
>> >> of the film.
>> >>
>> >> The Los Angeles Times found a mother who had ?supported [Bush]
>> >> fiercely? at a theater in Des Peres, Missouri: ?Emerging from Michael
>> >> Moore's ?Fahrenheit 9/11,? her eyes wet, Leslie Hanser said she at
>> >> last understood
>> >> . ?My emotions are just....? She trailed off, waving her hands to
>> >> show confusion. ?I feel like we haven't seen the whole truth >>
>before.
?"
>> >>
>> >> All of this had to be the absolute worst news for the White House to
>> >> wake up to on Monday morning. I guess they were in such a stupor,
>> >> they "gave" Iraq back to, um, Iraq two days early!
>> >>
>> >> News editors told us that they were being "bombarded" with e-mails
>> >> and calls from the White House (read: Karl Rove), trying to spin
>> >> their way out of this mess by attacking it and attacking me. Bush
>> >> spokesman Dan Bartlett had told the White House press corps that the
>> >> movie was "outrageously false" -- even though he said he hadn't seen
>> >> the movie. He later told CNN that "This is a film that doesn't
>> >> require us to actually view it to know that it's filled with factual
>> >> inaccuracies." At least they're consistent. They never needed to see
>> >> a single weapon of mass destruction before sending our kids off to
>> >> die.
>> >>
>> >> Many news shows were more than eager to buy the White House spin.
>> >> After all, that is a big part of what "Fahrenheit" is about -- how
>> >> the lazy, compliant media bought all the lies from the Bush
>> >> administration about the need to invade Iraq. They took the Kool-Aid
>> >> offered by the White House and rarely, if ever, did our media ask the
>> >> hard questions that needed to be asked before the war started.
>> >>
>> >> Because the movie "outs" the mainstream media for their failures and
>> >> their complicity with the Bush administration -- who can ever forget
>> >> their incessant, embarrassing cheerleading as the troops went off to
>> >> war, as though it was all just a game -- the media was not about to
>> >> let me get away with anything now resembling a cultural phenomenon.
>> >> On show after show, they went after me with the kind of viciousness
>> >> you would have hoped they had had for those who were lying about the
>> >> necessity for invading a sovereign nation that was no threat to us. I
>> >> don't blame our well-paid celebrity journalists -- they look like a
>> >> bunch of ass-kissing dopes in my movie, and I guess I'd be pretty mad
>> >> at me, too. After all, once the NASCAR fans see "Fahrenheit 9/11,"
>> >> will they ever believe a single thing they see on ABC/NBC/CBS news
>> >> again?
>> >>
>> >> In the next week or so, I will recount my adventures through the
>> >> media this past month (I will also be posting a full FAQ on my
>> >> website soon so that you can have all the necessary backup and
>> >> evidence from the film when you find yourself in heated debate with
>> >> your conservative brother-in-law!). For now, please know the
>> >> following: Every single fact I state in "Fahrenheit 9/11" is the
>> >> absolute and irrefutable truth. This movie is perhaps the most
>> >> thoroughly researched and vetted documentary of our time. No fewer
>> >> than a dozen people, including three teams of lawyers and the
>> >> venerable one-time fact-checkers from The New Yorker went through
>> >> this movie with a fine-tooth comb so that we can make this guarantee
>> >> to you. Do not let anyone say this or that isn't true. If they say
>> >> that, they are lying. Let them know that the OPINIONS in the film are
>> >> mine, and anyone certainly has a right to disagree with them. And the
>> >> questions I pose in the movie, based on these irrefutable facts, are
>> >> also mine. And I have a right to ask them. And I will continue to ask
>> >> them until they are answered.
>> >>
>> >> In closing, let me say that the most heartening response to the film
>> >> has come from our soldiers and their families. Theaters in military
>> >> towns across the country reported packed houses. Our troops know the
>> >> truth. They have seen it first-hand. And many of them could not
>> >> believe that here was a movie that was TRULY on their side -- the
>> >> side of bringing them home alive and never sending them into harms
>> >> way again unless it's the absolute last resort. Please take a moment
>> >> to read this wonderful story from the daily paper in Fayetteville,
>> >> NC, where Fort Bragg is located. It broke my heart to read this, the
>> >> reactions of military families and the comments of an infantryman?s
>> >> wife publicly backing my movie -- and it gave me the resolve to make
>> >> sure as many Americans as possible see this film in the coming weeks.
>> >>
>> >> Thank you again, all of you, for your support. Together we did
>> >> something for the history books. My apologies to "Return of the
>> >> Jedi." We'll make it up by producing "Return of the Texan to
>> >> Crawford" in November.
>> >>
>> >> May the farce be with you, but not for long,
>> >>
>> >> Michael Moore www.michaelmoore.com
>> >> mmflint@xxxxxxx
>> >>
>> >> P.S. You can read letters from people around the country recounting
>> >> their own experiences at the theater, and their reactions to the film
>> >> by going here.
>> >>
>> >> P.P.S. Also, I?m going to start blogging! Tonight! Come on over and
>> >> check it out.
>> >>
>> >>
>>
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